TERRI SCHLICHENMEYER The Bookworm Sez Advertisement

If TV cop shows can be believed, then most policemen live in big major cities or creepy little burgs because those are the only places where crime happens.

If TV cop shows can be believed, all calls are emergencies and bloody victims are almost always involved. Crimes are discovered at night, with lots of red-and-blues flashing. Killers are always either drug-addled or maniacally evil. And everything is wrapped up nice and neat within an hour, two at most.

But then, you never believed all that, did you?

In the new book "Bad Cop" by Paul Bacon, you'll read the funny, boring, mundane parts of being a New York City cop from the perspective of someone who didn't set out to be a cop in the first place.

The perfect slacker's job was what Paul Bacon had a decade ago. He worked about three hours a day in his Manhattan apartment, for a "major online directory." When that bubble burst, he went to work for a temp agency, then for a Wall Street company.

But Sept. 11, 2001, as he was stumbling from the ash and dust of two destroyed towers, he noticed the authority and honor given to the New York City police. Filled with pride and optimism, the man who claims that guns made him queasy signed up to be a cop.

After applying, going through a physical and a reading test, medical and psychiatric tests, and a six-month-long background check, Bacon was accepted as a recruit. Training was relatively easy and including a series of simulated video crime-scenes in which nothing was as it seemed, which, of course, was the way the job could be.

As a new rookie, Bacon says his first beat was walking the streets of Precinct 32 in Harlem, writing summonses for double parking and public urination and hating that he wasn't "making a difference."

Later, and after not filling his quota-that-wasn't-a-quota, he was transferred to the mobile stabilization unit and learned how much fun it was to make collars.

But before he could see his dream of working Harbor Division come true, Bacon had transferred back to Harlem, destroyed his pristine sick record, strengthened his crush on a fellow officer, and he'd learned that the crush of paperwork for a New York City cop could be career-killing.

Maybe I've been reading too many true-crime books, but "Bad Cop" wasn't what I was expecting. It was better.

Bacon mixes humor and dismay at his tale of boredom, increasing apathy, and occasional bursts of excitement in his book, and nothing about high-speed chases, high-profile murders or high-level criminals.

Instead, you get a story about a cop who wanted all of the above but got an everyday, "hairbag," in-the-trenches, makes-no-difference existence that he hated.

"I was no good as a bad cop," he says, "and not bad enough to be a good cop."

While police officers might scoff at this story, I found "Bad Cop" to be occasionally funny, unique and honest. It's a quick, well-done book, and you can believe that.

"Bad Cop" by Paul Bacon, Bloomsbury, $15, 260 pages.